After years of doing low-brow comedies that still make decent coin (ie. Norbit) it appears that Eddie Murphy may finally be growing tired of associating himself with critical flops. He obviously doesn’t need the money at this point, and in a recent interview with Extra, he dropped a pretty massive bombshell. Eddie Murphy is actually considering retirement.

“I have close to fifty movies and it’s like, why am I in the movies? I’ve done that part now. I’ll go back to the stage and do standup.”

I think there are a lot of people who would say this is a smart move on his part, and while it would be cool to see him do stand up again, I have another suggestion: why not just be a little more picky with the roles he chooses? No one’s saying he has to do a movie every year. He’s only 47 years old, so why not wait for interesting and different projects to come along (like, say, Dreamgirls) instead of doing every silly comedy that falls in his lap?

Of course, Murphy’s statement immediately has people wondering about the status of Beverly Hills Cop 4. Apparently he wants no part of it because it simply “wasn’t ready to be done”. A Beverly Hills Cop sequel without Murphy? Ouch. I don’t care if it’s R-rated or not, that just doesn’t sound like something anyone would be interested in.